Ottawa

We went up along the north side of Lake Ontario yesterday on our trip toward Nova Scotia.  The agriculture became smaller and by all indications more part time as we went and by the time we left the lakeshore for a final straight run into Ottawa we were in the jackpine area complete with stumpy trees, burnt over in one place and thin soil.  The farms focused upon grazing, hay and firewood mostly.  We did see a few small pastured dairy herds and more than a few small stock cow herds and sheep flocks.  The train spent ten minutes idling next to a New Holland Agriculture lot, allowing another train to meet.  The machines displayed were of the kind we used twenty years ago:  haybine sickle models, twelve feet in width, small bale balers, small round bale machines and one self propelled haybine, also a twelve footer. 

The soil was in small irregular fields, mostly in grass cover.  Tractors in use were mostly "one step up" models-good old man machines-and very few tillage implements or row crop planters were in evidence.  This is all logical, of course, given the soil and the shortness of the season, but it does prompt the question about why it is that the more expensive land is, the more poorly it is cared for.  In the corn belt, the chase to make the payments supercedes good farming practice, evidently. 

Why does the government connive to make row crops the highest return to any agricultural land?  And what will it take to resurrect a decent farming culture despite this?  Is it possible?

Jim